On Media

Alex Sink rejects Chuck Todd debate offer

When NBC News offered up Chuck Todd as a moderator for a debate later this month for the Florida congressional special election, it ran into an unexpected problem: a Democrat.

Our colleague Alex Isenstadt reports that while Republican David Jolly was fine with the arrangement, Democrat Alex Sink was not. She and her team wanted to stick with the initial plan to have a University of South Florida political scientist handle the question instead of NBC's chief White House correspondent, who's a Florida native himself:

As she’s come under fierce assault from Republicans who’ve spent millions of dollars on TV ads casting her as a supporter of President Barack Obama and his unpopular health care law, Sink’s aggressively tried to turn attention to local issues such as the rising cost of flood insurance premiums. Todd, who caters to a national audience, could have thrown a wrench into her strategy by focusing his questions on issues such as Obamacare.

The publicity from a debate with Todd would've been a coup for the debate's host, the Clearwater Regional Chamber of Commerce. But that noise isn't what Sink is looking for, Isenstadt reports:

Todd’s participation would have surely intensified the already high national interest in the race, something that Sink hasn’t been relishing. Many political handicappers have called the race for the St. Petersburg-area 13th District a bellwether, but in an interview with POLITICO last week Sink called the talk of national implications “noise.”

“Unfortunately we’re the first race of the cycle. That’s why people like you are down here,” she told a reporter. “If this was six months from now, I don’t think you’d be back here to write about my congressional race. So it gives you something to write about.”

Sink may have had another reason for keeping Todd out. In 2010, following her unsuccessful gubernatorial race, Todd said she ran the single worst campaign of the year. During a debate that year with Republican Rick Scott, Sink came under fire for checking notes on a cellphone, a violation of the rules.